dotfiles

My dotfiles: i3wm, Vim, tmux, zsh, termite.

Stow

Stow is a symlink farm manager program which takes distinct sets of software and/or data located in separate directories on the filesystem, and makes them all appear to be installed in a single directory tree.

Arch Linux:

yay -Sy stow

I use stow to have all dotfiles on ~/.dotfiles under version control git.

Cloning the repo

I recommend to clone the repo on ~/.dofiles directory

git clone git@github.com:Sergi030/dotfiles.git .dotfiles

I3

1. Install I3 and dependencies

yay -Sy i3-gaps i3blocks pavucontrol ttf-font-awesome ttf-font-awesome-4 alsa-utils flameshot rofi playerctl

VIM

1. Install vim

yay -Sy vim

2. Install Vundle:

git clone https://github.com/VundleVim/Vundle.vim.git ~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim

3. Stow VIM config

cd ~/.dotfiles && stow VIM && cd -

4. Install Vundle PLugins

vim +PluginInstall +qall

5. Install last requierements

# Install ctags, cmake
yay -Sy ctags cmake

# Complete the installation of YouCompleteMe
cd .vim/bundle/YouCompleteMe/ && ./install.py --all && cd -

Termite

1. Install termite

yay -Sy termite

2. Install requiered Fonts:

git clone https://github.com/powerline/fonts.git --depth=1
cd fonts
./install.sh
cd ..
rm -rf fonts

3. Stow termite

cd ~/.dotfiles && stow TERMITE && cd -

ZSH

1. Install ZSH

yay -Sy zsh

2. Install ohmyzsh

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

3. Stow ZSH

rm ~/.zshrc && cd ~/.dotfiles && stow ZSH && cd -

4. Make ZSH the default shell

chsh -s /bin/zsh

TMUX

My Tmux configuration is from gpakosz

1. Install tmux

yay -Sy tmux

2. Stow TMUX

cd ~/.dotfiles && stow TMUX && cd -

Hyprland

1. Install Hyprland and the session programs

sudo apt install -y hyprland waybar swww wl-clipboard cliphist hypridle hyprlock kanshi dunst rofi brightnessctl

2. Stow Hypr

~/.config/systemd/user must exist first, otherwise stow folds the whole systemd tree into a symlink and no other unit can ever be added to it.

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
cd ~/.dotfiles && stow Hypr && cd -

3. Enable the session services

The session is run by systemd, not by exec-once. hyprland.conf starts a single unit, hyprland-session.target, which pulls in graphical-session.target; every service below hangs off that and is restarted automatically if it dies. Stow only symlinks the unit files — enabling them is separate state, so do it once per machine:

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable kanshi.service waybar.service swww.service \
    wl-clip-persist.service cliphist-text.service cliphist-image.service \
    hypridle.service hyprpolkitagent.service

Then log out and back in, or start it in place:

systemctl --user start hyprland-session.target

4. Checking on it

systemctl --user list-units 'kanshi*' 'waybar*' 'swww*' 'cliphist*' 'hypridle*'
journalctl --user -u kanshi -e        # why a service died

Gotcha: stow folds drop-in directories, and systemd ignores them

systemd does not follow a symlinked foo.service.d directory, and it fails silently — systemctl --user show <unit> -p DropInPaths just comes back empty and the packaged defaults apply. If stow folds hypridle.service.d into a single symlink, every override in it is quietly dropped.

Keep the .service.d directories real so stow only symlinks the .conf files inside them:

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user/{hypridle,waybar,hyprpolkitagent}.service.d
cd ~/.dotfiles && stow Hypr
systemctl --user show waybar -p DropInPaths   # must NOT be empty

Note that kill -9 does not catch this: SIGKILL counts as a failure, so a unit left on the packaged Restart=on-failure still comes back and looks healthy. Test with kill -TERM (a clean exit) to tell on-failure and always apart.

To add another autostart program, write a unit with PartOf=graphical-session.target / WantedBy=graphical-session.target and enable it — do not add exec-once lines to hyprland.conf, as those are unsupervised and stay dead once the program crashes.

VSCODE

Stows settings.json and keybindings.json into ~/.config/Code/User/.

~/.config/Code/User must already exist as a real directory before stowing, otherwise stow folds it into a symlink and VS Code's entire state directory (History/, globalStorage/, workspace databases) ends up inside this repo.

cd ~/.dotfiles && stow VSCODE && cd -

snippets/.gitignore only exists to keep the otherwise-empty snippets/ directory tracked; stow skips it, since .gitignore is on stow's default ignore list.